Iraq abuse inquiry little more than a whitewash, says official

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British soldiers stop the vehicle of Iraqi men before escorting them for questioning near Basra in April 2003

The Ministry of Defence says an investigation will be launched into claims that an inquiry it set up to examine whether British troops abused Iraqi prisoners has become "little more than a whitewash".

Louise Thomas, an official working with the inquiry team who says she has resigned in protest at the lack of progress, spent six months working with the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which was set up in response to a growing number of complaints from former prisoners. Many were detained at a secretive interrogation centre that the Britishmilitary operated in the south-east of the country.

Thomas, 45, a former Wren who also served as a police officer for five years, told the Guardian she had seen around 1,600 videos of interrogation sessions, a number of which showed prisoners being abused, humiliated and threatened.

They suggested that some of the detainees were being subject to extreme sleep deprivation and beaten between interrogation sessions.

Thomas alleges that the abuses recorded in the videos are being investigated in an ineffective manner, by investigators who sometimes show little concern for what they are seeing, and that not all relevant material has been handed over to the inquiry by the MoD.

"I saw a really dark side of the British army," Thomas said. "The videos showed really quite terrible abuses. But some of the IHAT investigators just weren't interested."

The MoD said any allegations of inappropriate conduct or inattention to duty by IHAT members would be investigated by IHAT's management and that appropriate action would be taken.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "All of these allegations of abuse are known to the Ministry of Defence and Iraq Historical Allegations Team (IHAT) which is why the independent IHAT is already investigating them.

"The MoD has cooperated fully, including the provision of all known evidence.

"We are confident in the IHAT's abilities and following the outcome of their investigations, action will be considered against individuals where appropriate. Any criticisms about IHAT itself are for the organisation to answer."

The abuse allegations focus on a joint services interrogation centre under Intelligence Corps command, the Joint Forces Interrogation Team (JFIT), that operated at three locations in the Basra area between March 2003 and December 2008.

In November 2010, JFIT was described in the high court by lawyers representing the prisoners as "Britain's Abu Ghraib".

Thomas alleges that some IHAT investigators, based at the inquiry's headquarters on a military base near Pewsey, in Wiltshire, show little interest in the contents of the videos, making comments such as "who cares, they're terrorists?" or "they're only bombers".

"They would laugh at me, because I was interested and concerned. They would say 'Here comes Miss Marple' when I came by."

She added that she was concerned that IHAT was "little more than a whitewash", rather than a genuine investigation.

Thomas said that on the day she resigned from IHAT she lodged a three-page document in which she raised serious concerns about the way in which the contents of the videos were being investigated, and added that she had made a number of previous written complaints.

Thomas is known to have given a witness statement to lawyers representing the former prisoners, in which she raises her concerns about IHAT.

During her time working at IHAT, Thomas says she discovered that custody records prepared at JFIT at the same time as the videos suggest that not all the interrogation videos that were recorded have been disclosed to IHAT. She also alleged that IHAT investigators have on occasion had difficulty accessing data held on an MoD computer. In her interview with the Guardian, Thomas alleged that the videos of interrogations showed:

• Prisoners threatened with rape during interrogation.

• Prisoners being told they were to be hanged and given a detailed description of the mechanics of hanging.

• An adolescent boy being interrogated and his father being allowed briefly into the room to hug him.

• A man being interrogated while naked from the waist down.

• One prisoner having acquired a black eye in between interrogation sessions.

• Prisoners complaining of starvation.

• A prisoner aged around 50 begging for a hours to be allowed to relieve himself.

• Young guards holding exhausted prisoners upright while an interrogator screams at them: "Hold the fucker up!"

• Frequent use of "harshing", which entails several interrogators screaming at a single prisoner from a distance of a few inches.

Thomas also alleged that military witnesses have given statements to IHAT saying that detainees at JFIT were handed over to US forces after being told that they were to be hanged, and that the US troops who took them into detention made hanging motions to the prisoners, with their hands around their own throats.

Her description of the contents of the videos corroborates descriptions previously given to the Guardian by a senior investigator with a detailed knowledge of the IHAT inquiry. A former soldier who served as a guard at JFIT has confirmed that he and others were ordered to take hold of blindfolded prisoners by their thumbs in between interrogation sessions, then drag them around assault courses, where they could not be filmed.

He also confirmed that the prisoners were often beaten during these runs, and that they would then be returned for interrogation in front of a video camera.